An Erie-sistible Summer

Hi Everyone!

The Summer Group =)

So far, my summer in Erie has been SO MUCH FUN!  I always heard how summers in Erie are the best and now I totally understand why!  Although my friends and I have been busy working, we've still managed to find lots of free time for some fun (even if it means coordinating around my weekend work shifts).

Sunsets and beach tans <3

Probably one of the best (and free!) things that we've been fully taking advantage of is several visits to Presque Isle.  4th of July weekend was so much fun because I think my friends and I went every day!  Whether it be tanning in the afternoons or going to some of the free concerts at night and watching the sunset, the beach has certainly proven to be a great place to have some guaranteed fun!

Never too old for a piggyback...

Speaking of 4th of July, my friends and I managed to keep busy with lots of fun on the 4th.  Jeremy, Joe, and I decided to go to Presque Isle to have a small bbq and then spend the day at the beach after.  After I diligently watched the boys learn how to cook on a charcoal grill (teehee!), we laid on the beach, tanned, and even went in the water because it was so hot out!  After, the three of us met up with some other friends and went to my roommate Lindsay's family picnic where we played volleyball, ate awesome food, and enjoyed the weather.

...or an icecream cone w/ sprinkles =)

And of course, what's 4th of July weekend without some fireworks?!  Although we opted to watch a movie in the apartment on the 4th, we did go to Waldameer Park (an amusement park by Presque Isle) to see fireworks and also put the cherry on top to a great night with a trip to Sara's, a burger and icecream shop by the beach.

Hope everyone's summer is going as awesome as mine is! =)

Sophomore Year Photo Recap

Hi Everyone!

I apologize that I haven't posted in quite some time-- I've been thoroughly enjoying my summer vacation and took a little blogging vacation!  However, I've been meaning to do a photo recap (thanks for the idea Lindsay!) so that we can all have a way to remember how much fun my year was =)

September-  Let the school year begin!  September began with a roomie dinner after finally getting somewhat situated and settled in our first apartment and later on in the month, there was Hurst Fest, which is also Homecoming and Alumni Weekend here at the 'Hurst.  Every year, I'm always amazed at how fast September flies, it's probably one of the best months of the school year =)

October- This month was filled with making lots of new friends: I have a picture of everyone from the 2010-2011 Mercyhurst Student Government, which, much to my surprise, became a big part of my sophomore year, a 21st birthday party for a fellow blogger Lindsay, who I became very good friends with as well as her other roommates (who are now going to be my junior year roomies!) and then of course, not forgetting old friends-- pictured is my friend Laura and I, who I met Halloween freshman year; here we are Halloween sophomore year! 

November- Oh, November!  Unfortunately, I don't have too many pictures from November because it's kind of a slower month with the end of the term wrapping up, studying, finals, and then Thanksgiving Break. HOWEVER, my friends and I did randomly go out to Applebees one night for a going away dinner and we got a little distracted in the parkinglot and decided to take pictures...

December- What. a. crazy. month.  Looking back at my December pictures, I came across lots and lots of ugly sweaters.  I remember having three ugly sweater parties to go to, and being a fashion merchandising major, I can't have an ugly sweater outfit repeat ;)  In addition to ugly sweaters, I also managed to break out the bikinis since I spent part of Christmas break visiting my roommate Kylie in Florida.

January- January was such a great month-- I got to celebrate my birthday with some of my best friends, a couple of us spontaneously decided to compete in a pizza making competition, and my roommates and I went to hockey games to cheer our friend Dave on.  Don't let anyone fool you about the snow prohibiting you from having fun, there's plenty of ways to have fun, you just need to get a little creative!

 

February- The only picture I have from February is of this brownie cake that I made my friend Jeremy for his birthday, which is on Valentines Day.  In February, my friends and I also threw him a surprise birthday party, which was really fun because he was completely shocked!  Winter term was coming to an end and I worked all February Break (but caught a shoplifter, which was pretty cool!).

 March- So not gonna lie, in high school March was by far my least favorite month-- it was still snowy, the month just dragged, and school always seemed especially boring.  But not in college!  I always look forward to March because every year it seems to be 31 days of a jam-packed planner-- I'm pretty sure I only had one or two completely commitment free days all month!  I had end of the year banquets for the Ambassador's Club (Spring Tea) and Student Government (we went to this hibachi restaurant, yum!), and in my limited spare time, I filled it doing fun things with my friends!  One night, my friends and I went to a local, Middle Eastern restaurant where we sat around a circular table and ate on the floor with cushions, how cool.

April- Now that the weather finally started to get nice, my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed it by participating in such events like the annual MSG Spring Charity Ball and the second annual Relay for Life on campus.  We even squeezed in a trip to Presque Isle because it was so nice out-- we tend to use the nice weather as an excuse for not doing homework ;) Somehow, the work always manages to get done though!

May- Probably my craziest month of the entire school year.  As a newly elected E-Board member of MSG, one of my first orders of business was to help run Spring Fest, which consisted of 48 hours of early mornings and late, late nights, but luckily with the company of the new MSG and SAC boards.  In addition to the Spring Fest madness, there was also the whole getting excited for summer vacation (because I just got hired at Charming Charlie in Erie, which meant I could spend the summer on campus with friends, yay!) and trying to focus and study for final exams.  Luckily, my friends and I managed to have a great last few weeks before the school year ended and we continued to make some great memories-- going to Meg's house, spontaneous photo taking "so that we don't forget a single moment in college" (haha thanks Lindsay!), and "the boy's" end of the year classy get together/graduation farewell.

Wow, what a year; it's crazy to think that I'm halfway through with college!  But to end on a great note after a great year-- here's to an AMAZING summer (I'm already a few weeks in, and it's been great so far).  I'll definitely try to post about my summer in Erie, but I don't know how frequently it will be... but keep your eyes out for more great pictures and stories about my life as a laker =)

More End of the Year Fun

We'll miss you Heiden!

So this past weekend was everyone's last weekend on campus which is crazy!  I can't believe that my sophomore year has already gone by.  To celebrate the last weekend on campus, my roommates and I went to a get together at our friends' house because they were all graduating.

My Sophomore Roomies

Girls were told to wear nice dresses and guys wore nice shirts; some even wore suits and ties!  My roommates and I had a lot of fun getting dressed up, putting makeup on, and putting on some heels for a nice little end of the year gathering =)

Jess, Kylie, and myself

After, Kylie my roommate, our friend Jess, and I went to Kylie's teammate's townhouse to hang out with some of the water polo girls.  Again, it was fun to do something a little out of the norm, as opposed to my normal weekend routine of hanging out with the same group of people at the same apartment.

I think it's time to get back to studying-- I've got my stats final tomorrow, a fashion final on Wednesday, and then my end of the year fashion project (a skirt) to check off my to do list and then I'm FREE!  As for the rest of the summer, I've got a MSG/SAC retreat from Wednesday until Saturday, volunteering at graduation on Sunday, and then my parents are helping me move into temporary housing and I'll be starting my new job!  T-minus 48 hours until summer...

A Wonderfully, Amazing Day

Last Thursday was awesome!  My friends and I decided to have an end of the year picnic/bbq on campus.  It was really convenient because we have a pavillion on campus (I can actually see it from my apartment!) where there are grills and picnic tables for students to use on warm days like Thursday.  I made this really yummy spinach and ranch dip, but we also had hotdogs, hamburgers, ribs, fruit salad, and s'mores to name a few things... yum!

One of our picnic tables of friends =)

While I was hanging out with my friends, I had an unknown number call my phone.  I recognized that it was an Erie area code and was expecting to hear back to see if I got a job or not and I just had a good feeling that it was them.  Sure enough, it was Charming Charlie, the accessories store in Erie that I want to work at and they were calling me to say that I got the job!  I was so excited because that meant that I had a summer job in Erie and I could stay here for the summer with some of my friends =)  It was turning out to be a pretty good day.

After we all finished eating, my friends and I were enjoying the nice weather (it was supposed to rain, but it held off for us) and we tossed a frisbee around and then played sand volleyball for I don't even know how long.  So many students were outside either tanning, playing catch, or just hanging out-- it literally felt like summer vacation.  The rude reality then hit us all later that it wasn't in fact summer vacation and that we had a lot of work to do before we could wrap up the school year but regardless, it was definitely a foreshadowing to summer vacation, which is so close, we can all taste it.

Grace House Silent Art Auction

Our wedding dress before...

Last night in the Cummings Art Gallery (an on-campus art gallery we have), I participated in the second annual Grace House Silent Art auction.  This was a really unique opportunity that was sponsored by the Communications department here at school.  Students purchased a donated wedding or prom dress and were given time to re-work it into a piece of art that would be auctioned off to benefit the Grace House, a program that helps women returning from military service to make a smooth transition into the Erie community.

There were a lot of cool things that people created.  My friend Elissa and I decided to make a mixed media piece on a canvas.  Some of the faculty members and students from the Fashion Merchandising department also decided to make a variety of pieces, which all fell into their "Real Housewives of Erie County" display which I thought was really unique.  People also made purses, dresses, and one of my personal favorites, a Cinderella chair!

... and after (the lace on the red dress is actual lace from the dress!)

This was the first year I participated in this event and I definitely will do it again next year.  Not only was it for a great cause, but it was also just a really fun event.  It's always nice to have the opportunity to mingle with students and faculty (especially in my case when it was a lot of my professors!) AND they had really good h'orderves!  All in all, I had a really great time and would encourage you all to take advantage of cool opportunities like this that may come up =)

Spring Fest! =)

Hi Everyone,

Every year, Mercyhurst Student Government and the Student Activities Council put on the much anticipated Spring Fest!  As an MSG Executive Board member, myself and the other MSG E-Board and SAC members had the pleasure of making this huge event happen on campus.  Needless to say, I wasn't expecting much sleep this weekend-- it was a lot of early mornings and late nights with non-stop running around, but what a memorable weekend!

What a weekend... but we did it! =)

We met Frankie Muniz!

On Friday, we had the Spring Fest concert; this year we had five bands-- The Romantic Era (a local band), Andy Grammar, You Hang Up, Parachute, and our big band, the Plain White T's came to perform in our athletic center.  Frankie Muniz is actually the drummer in the band You Hang Up, so it was pretty awesome that Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle was at our school!  The Plain White T's were also great-- we all got so excited to hear the radio hit "Hey There Delilah," and for them to be singing that song in our small school was really awesome.

My Future Roommate Kaleigh =)

On Saturday; we had a novelties, prizes, food, and other fun activities going on all afternoon.  This year's theme was Luau, so we also had Polynesian Dancers/Fire Throwers come perform.  We had a 27 foot inflatable rock climbing wall, an inflatable obstacle course, cotton candy, chocolate fondue, t-shirt tie dying, spin art frisbee making, and lei making, to name a few things!  We also had prizes that you could try to win; this year it was a 32" HDTV, a digital camera, or the "cash cube," which was when you tried grabbing money that was flying around in this cube.

Lookin' good Louie!

So that's this year's Spring Fest in a nutshell!  It's always in May right before finals (which start a week from this Monday, AHH!!!!) so it's a great way for everyone to get their minds off of school work temporarily to have some fun before we all prepare to study hard so we can start our summer.  It's hard to believe that in a week and a half, I will have officially completed half of my college career-- we're not kidding when we say that the college years fly by!

Here's to working hard and playing hard... 

After all, it's all about balance! =) 

Sarah

Forever Young, I Wanna Be Forever Young...

Hi Everyone!

Vacation time? Hardly. But we try!

Sorry for the brief blogging vacation!  I guess I'm trying to trick myself into thinking that I'm on vacation when in reality, that's hardly the case, haha oops. 

So on Friday night, in honor of the royal wedding, my roommate Chelsea and I, decided to have a belated Princess Party.  I had a fashion test Friday morning, so I didn't wake up and watch the wedding live (as much as I wanted to!), but it was worth the wait.  I wish you could have seen us, we were both on the couch with our tv trays set up, eating Panera Bread for dinner in our pajamas, while watching the Royal Wedding.  I told her how I wished someone was there to take a picture of us because it was truly college life at its finest =)

Relay for Life

On Saturday, Mercyhurst hosted the second annual Relay for Life, which is a great event for such a worthy cause.  My high school always had a Relay for Life so I'd been to the event before, but this year was the first year that I was actually on a team, so that was really cool!  A bunch of student government friends and I were on a team as well as some of the Student Activities Council kids, but a lot of my friends from outside of MSG were on teams too!

Three cheers for Presque Isle!

After I finished my shift at relay, some of my friends and I went to Presque Isle to play on the beach and procrastinate doing homework, err... enjoy the nice weather ;)

My friends and I constantly say how the one thing we've learned in college is how much of a little kid we all are, despite the fact that we're supposedly "adults."  Because let's be honest some things like Princess Parties and playing at the beach, you'll never grow out of!

Here's to another great week-- I have a job interview on Tuesday (I'm trying to find a job so I can stay on campus over the summer!) and then on Friday and Saturday, SPRING FEST!  Stay tuned for more fun college adventures!


Sarah